Introductions and Explanations
Greetings fellow multiplayer enthusiasts! My name is Prid3 and I'm a 15+ year veteran of the game who's been playing Magic: the Gathering since the Winter of 2000. While I've followed and played the game at a competitive-level across every major duel format the bulk of my personal playtime has been spent at kitchen tables duking it out in large multiplayer matches. Be it Cube, Constructed or EDH I've played tens of thousands of hours of multiplayer Magic in my life and have since made it my goal to impart some of that knowledge and experience on to you. As such this set review is solely focused towards the multiplayer crowd with an emphasis on budget-minded, fair Magic that adheres to a Legacy-esque banned/restricted list. While I'll still touch on degenerate combos and unfair applications I understand that not everyone takes the game as seriously as my own circles and as such I try to balance my reviews to ensure that they're applicable to players of all levels. From turn 1 kills to turn 20 slugfests I'll do my best to keep these relevant for anyone and everyone who routinely sits down at a multiplayer table.
Before moving on I'll quickly touch on some important book-keeping notes that you should be made aware of before delving deeper into this set review. First, know that I never evaluate every single card in a new set. There's absolutely no reason to repeat "this card was designed for duel formats/Limited" hundreds of times so don't expect me to touch on chaff. I'll hit on what I consider to be the key multiplayer cards with an emphasis on the ones that you should make a concerted effort to acquire. Moreover, bear in mind that all ratings discussed in this evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt. It's virtually impossible to give a card a grade that accurately reflects its worth in Cube, Constructed and EDH and so for the purposes of this guide I slant it mostly towards Constructed. I'll touch on Cube and EDH whenever I feel that it's especially applicable but otherwise my primary emphasis will be on a card's 60-card Constructed applications. Finally, I'm not looking to pin down the perfect letter grade for every single card. I'm merely trying to provide you with a rough estimation of its overall worth.
Grading Scale: A: Oppressive cards that completely warp the game around them. These are format definers that figure to dominate games and crush opponents who aren't playing with cards of a similar power-level. These are must-have competitive staples with limitless potential. Think Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Humility, Consecrated Sphinx, Sylvan Primordial, Repercussion. B: Extremely formidable cards that will allow you to pull ahead of the pack. Although they lack the visceral overpowered-ness that A's possess winning decks should still be clamoring to field them. This makes them top-priority acquisition targets for players of all skill-levels. Think Syphon Mind, Earthquake, Wrath of God, Rite of Replication, Woodland Bellower. C: Powerful cards that winning decks will want to play. A list full of these won't crush a table but a solid foundation of C's should be good enough to keep you competitive. Think Wight of Precinct Six, Clever Impersonator, Taurean Mauler, Thragtusk, Restoration Angel. D: Marginal playables that can flesh out your lists in the absence of reasonable alternatives. I strongly encourage you to focus your efforts elsewhere if it's a realistic option since they're unlikely to yield impressive win %s. F: Extremely weak cards that shouldn't be played under any circumstances. +/-: Used to denote a better or worse N. That is, a B+ represents a strong B whereas C- implies a weak C.
Colorless
Kozilek, the Great Distortion: I wrote my full thoughts on the card here but the TL;DR is that I think that this is one of the best cards in the set. Giving every color access to "unlimited"Mental Misstep-Counterspell hybrids is completely overpowered as it turns already strong cards (such as Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Greater Good, Deathreap Ritual, Syphon Mind and Consecrated Sphinx) into virtual game winners. Kozilek is insane both as a revival target and a generic fatty to ramp out and pairs extremely well with Black/Blue's insane draw options (such as Mystic Remora and Necrologia) while naturally slotting into Green's rampy gameplan. Careful Study -> Animate Dead is a big game in Ub Control and Green can always go Wild Growth/Utopia Sprawl -> Basalt Monolith/Somberwald Sage -> Sylvan Primordial -> Kozilek for the instant refuel on turn 4/5. Most people are probably aware that BUG are the 3 strongest multiplayer colors to begin with which makes Kozilek one of the best fatties for the best color combos. Much like Void Winnower I think that global disruption is criminally underrated and that everyone unfairly assumes that someone is always going to have a clean answer and/or that your "goal" should be to prevent every spell from ever resolving. Lately I've been jamming this guy alongside Crypt Ghast/Sylvan Primordial in decks with powerful mana rocks (Basalt Monolith, Worn Powerstone, Hedron Archive, Thran Dynamo) to great effect. It's a one-card win condition that can effectively disrupt a large number of adversaries while bringing something completely new to the table in form of free Counterspells for every color.
Grade B+
Matter Reshaper: I wasn't high on this card at first glance and in testing it's been even more marginal than I feared. The colorless requirement is a real cost and unlike threats such as Coiling Oracle you don't get any immediate value other than a worthless body. Moreover, I think that cards like Solemn Simulacrum are overrated in general because "value" isn't the same thing as "game winning value" and far too often people look at "safe" 2-for-1s and assume that it's automatically a good idea to run them. The best reason to invest in these kinds of cards, in my mind, is that they're A) still decent (albeit not amazing) and B) they can be played in any deck of any colors. Unfortunately that just plain isn't the case for the Reshaper and jamming a 3/2 for 3 isn't my idea of a strong turn early-game play.
Grade D+
Endbringer: Coming into OGW I thought that this card was unplayable trash and a total trap. Luckily for me I tested the card before commenting on it so now I can save myself the embarrassment of falsely calling this card out. WAIT! You didn't read that! In my experience these kinds of cards almost always fail to "get there" but this is a rare instance where I couldn't have been more wrong. All of the modes have been extremely relevant in my testing and I sometimes willfully run this over Mind's Eye in decks that can reasonably support it. 2 mana to draw a card is still perfectly fine (I assumed that it would be far too taxing, it isn't) and having a huge body to gum up the ground is sweet when you're mostly trying to sit back and draw cards. It's also a decent form of removal and the fact that it answers threatening creatures comes up way more often than I initially gave credit for. Even the "tap mode" has been stellar for me since I've frequently used it to tap someone's "Walls" over ~2 turns and kill them with a Bonehoard or whatever. I highly recommend acquiring this card and slotting it into any deck that can support the colorless mana requirements. Cloudpost and Urza's Mine lands are the easiest enablers but any colorless mana (lands and/or ramp) can realistically work. After all, it's not as though you need to draw a card on each upkeep to make the thing worthwhile. Drawing 1-2 extra cards per circuit while killing/disrupting/beating-down is amazing value for a 6 drop.
Grade B
Closing Thoughts: Both Kozilek and Endbringer are amazing finishers in any deck that can properly support them. I expect Kozilek to leave his biggest mark in EDH whereas Endbringer strikes me more as a Constructed all-star for Cloudpost/Urzatron decks in decks that want actual bodies as opposed to durdly draw engines such as Mind's Eye.
White
Call the Gatewatch: This set has a lot of "Planeswalker matters" cards (mostly Enchantments) but for brevity's sake I'm going to use this entry to address all of them at all. I personally find that Planeswalkers are hard enough to protect when you're curving out with threats let alone when you're casting things that literally have no impact on the board. All things being equal it almost always makes sense to remove them at the earliest convenience which is why I've historically had such a harsh outlook on their competitive applications. I personally think that supporting "do nothing" engines with "do nothing" spells is a recipe for disaster and as such I think that all of these "Planeswalker matters" cards are incredibly weak.
Grade F+
Eldrazi Displacer: Blink-based Sun Titan/Training Grounds decks filled with all of the usual enters the battlefield (ETB) suspects love this thing. When compared to Flickerwisp it's clear that the card isn't amazing on turn 3 but since multiplayer (MP) games tend to be long and grindy as opposed to fast and aggressive you're often better-off prepping for the marathon as opposed to the sprint. It's also completely fine to play 4 of them given that they give you something to do with your mana each and every turn so it doesn't exactly matter if you "mulligan" by drawing a few too many every now and then. Otherwise go nuts blinking your Knight of the White Orchids, Blade Splicers, Angel of Finalitys, Thragtusks, whatever your heart desires. If you want to get really dirty then Peregrine Drake/Great Whale/Palinchron all say "hello!" but even outside of infinite combos this card does disgusting things in decks with Primordials and the like. Having now played with this card a fair amount I'll say that it's slightly worse than I originally thought mostly because of A) the colorless mana requirement and B) the fact that ~20% of the time it's merely a Nessian Courser but even in my fair decks the card does stupidly powerful things past a certain point and I've been extremely impressed with its performance as a whole. I've unhappily played other "bounce engines" such as Mistmeadow Witch to zero success whereas this one has felt genuinely powerful in the majority of my games. With respect to the best manabase to support it I recommend Cloudpost + Glimmerpost but feel free to work with whatever you've got.
Grade A
Linvala, the Preserver: White has desperately needed a Thragtusk to pair with its myriad of blink effects and while Linvala isn't the ideal candidate she's a solid first step. It's somewhat tragic that she's a nonbo with Restoration Angel but now that we have Eldrazi Displacer I don't feel nearly as bad about it. It's also unfortunate that they gave her the Timely Reinforcements restrictions but at the same time I can understand why Wizards didn't want a repeat of what happened when Thragtusk was legal in Standard. You're clearly not going to meet both requirements every time that you cast her but in multiplayer you'll almost always meet at least one of them and that's more than enough to justify running her out at basically any stage of the game. You can't do anything truly silly with her but as a generic 6 CMC threat that's resilient to removal it's hard to argue with what Linvala brings to the table. Her nightmare fail-case involves you having the most stuff and the most life which is a relatively good place to be and a 5/5 flier for 6 is still a card. To anyone wondering how she stacks-up to Sun Titan I've personally found her to be significantly worse but I do like having the option to run 1-2 if desired.
Grade C-
Wall of Resurgence: I think that this card is unplayable trash and I already know that it's going to be extremely overrated. Turning your lands into marginal threats is a downside as far as I'm concerned and neither a 3/3 nor an 0/6 are even remotely close to being worth part/all of a card. I get that you can stack the counters on the same land and that Sun Titan can recur it and blah blah blah but even then I would never put this in any of my decks. I don't even like Blade Splicer (I rarely-if-ever field it) and this strikes me as being many orders of magnitude worse. To anyone out there who thinks that this card is "insane value" or whatever I can guarantee you that it's Limited fodder at best.
Grade F+
Closing Thoughts:Eldrazi Displacer is a the most powerful Blink engine that we've ever seen in my opinion and I have it rated on the same level as Sun Titan. It's a total powerhouse staple with limitless applications and everyone should make a concerted effort to acquire them as some point.
Hedron Alignment: I've been testing versions on this deck online with absolutely no success. Even in lists with cheap cantrips, Intuitions and Dig Through Times it's not nearly as consistent or powerful as I'd like it to be. You randomly lose games to counterspells, discard effects, Back to Natures and whereas most other combo decks could easily recover and combo-off at a later time there's basically no room for error with the Alignment. The deck also needs (as in NEEDS) Intuition and since that's not exactly a budget-friendly card it's not as though you can build this list on the cheap. Dig Through Time is also fairly essential but since that card is banned in legacy and restricted in Vintage I don't want to recommend fielding 4 of them in casual games. That's like telling someone to bring a Skullclamp or Balance deck to their casual kitchen table match in my mind. Unlike most people I was actually hyped for this card at first but having now played with it I'm glad that I didn't purchase any paper copies. Even in off-beat Manipulate Fate + Misthollow Griffin decks the card doesn't come together nearly enough to justify building around it.
Grade D+
Prophet of Distortion: In my Blue multiplayer guide I state (and defend) that Blue has 0 playable 1 CMC Creatures in a multiplayer setting. At one point I was relatively high on cards like Azure Mage as bad 2 drops who were decent lategame manasinks but I haven't been nearly as keen to field them in the past few years. Rather, I tend to jam Merfolk Looter when I'm looking for a generic 2 drop and I think that that's a better place to be in general. If you're playing in a meta where Azure Mage/Jushi Apprentice style cards pass muster then the Prophet is certainly playable in your Cloudpost decks but for the time being I'm off of these marginal 1-2 drops who're realistically still weak 8 drops.
Grade D
Closing Thoughts:Crush of Tentacles is the closest thing to a playable but as a 6+ CMC and conditional spell it's not going to revolutionize Blue's mass removal suite.
Flaying Tendrils: I've been playing Massacre for over a decade now (I don't remember exactly when the set was released but you know what I'm saying) and for the life of me I don't know why I've basically never seen the thing in someone else's multiplayer deck. I think that cards like Infest are unplayable trash by comparison and even Drown in Sorrow is many orders of magnitude weaker than its "free" counterpart in my experience. The exile clause on Tendrils has me slightly intrigued but ultimately it's still 0 mana vs 3 and I'll take the free spell each and every time. I'll give this a shot in EDH but I do think that this card is markedly worse than Anger of the Gods since 3 damage is going to kill many more things on average. Since I'll chance upon these at some point I'm obviously going to hang on to them but this is never going to be a staple insofar as Massacre is a legal card.
Grade C-
Inverter of Truth: There are easier and more consistent ways to win games with Laboratory Maniac. I'm not buying into the hype this this will be a powerful beater/combo enabler. It's Abyssal Persecutor 2.0 and will see much more play than it deserves (although I actually really like the Persecutor in multiplayer for what it's worth).
Grade F+
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet: Kalitas is a 4 mana creature that dies to removal at no benefit. Last time I checked Sword to Plowshares (StP) is still a card and there's no law staying that you can't target this thing with Mizzium Mortars. Can I, as a "good player," put a 4 drop that "dies to removal" in my deck and feel good about it? Yes! Earthquake and Wrath of God are still amazing cards, nothing has changed on that front, but since most people like to play with new cards and regularly mix things up with new decks you just don't see 4x StP, 4x Grasp of Fate, 4x Wrath of God, etc. in every deck even if that's "optimal" or what have you. Since creatures tend to be more powerful than spells nowadays I find myself facing down many more creature-based decks that don't always make much of an effort to interact with anyone else. Trading 1-for-1 isn't exactly efficient so unless people are fielding combo decks it doesn't make much sense to waste time and resources hindering a single adversary. The long and short of it is that now more than ever I feel good about jamming these 4-6 drops that "die to removal" in my lists since they tend to stick around a lot longer than they used to. Hell, some of the best MP creatures in the game suffer from this drawback and yet they're still must-have staples. Look no further than Consecrated Sphinx or Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur which are format defining cards that "die to removal at no benefit." A huge % of the time people don't have an immediate answer to a troublesome threat and so these kinds of cards tend to dominate games more often than not.
Moving on to Kalitas himself it's clear that there's a lot going on here. A persistent form of Exile that doesn't "cost you a card" is fantastic since I love the Leyline of the Void effect but I'm generally unwilling to devote actual deckslots for it. Still, when you're playing with cards like Living Death or even against recursion in general it's nice to know that you've dealt with a problematic threat permanently. Lifegain is also always nice to have (even in the color with Gray Merchant of Asphodel) and since he can naturally pump himself gaining ~5-7 life a turn is a solid way to keep yourself out of burn range. As a sac outlet this card is clearly trash tier but since it doubles as a persistent form of enhancement you're going to find uses for it. The real meat of the card clearly lies in the token generation since this guy is bonkers in slow, grindy, creature-based metas. Insofar as combat/mass removal is being slung around then that effect is absolutely nuts and in my initial testing I've frequently cast this guy on turn 4 alongside a Massacre to put well over 20 power into play. Clearly he pairs well with/against any form of mass removal and given enough players it it's not hard for thsi guy to win games on his own. Some % of the time he'll die to removal at no benefit but left unchecked he tends to spiral out of control in a very short period of time. This is especially true in decks that feature cards like Blood Artist, Vicious Shadows and throngs of other multiplayer staples that you're probably looking to field anyways.
Sifter of Skulls: I'm a tad irked that this card is basically a strictly worse version of Pawn of Ulamog but I've been really high on Zulaport Cutthroat lately so I've grown to love these kinds of value engines. Insofar as your deck has powerful draw effects (Grim Haruspex, Dark Prophecy, Smothering Abomination) and plenty of "death matters" cards (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Falkenrath Noble) then pairing these kinds of cards with sac outlets (such as Viscera Seer/Sadistic Hypnotist) and mass revival (such as Wake the Dead/Living Death) can lead to degenerate sequences of one turn kill (OTK) combos. Much like Kalitas this is another 4 mana creature that dies to removal at no benefit so there's a ceiling on his power/consistency but insofar as your meta is light on spot removal (mass removal is obviously fine) I think that this type of engine is fantastic.
Grade D+
Closing Thoughts:Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is ridiculously overpowered and any sequence involving him + removal is going to leave people scrambling to find an answer for him.
Red
Chandra, Flamecaller: As we saw with Elspeth, Sun's Champnion when a card's fail-case is a Wrath of God (Slice and Dice in this instance) it's going to be a legitimate contender in most multiplayer decks that can reasonably cast it. I'm a huge fan of Jokulhaups-based decks that Obliterate the world and anything that can both survive them and win the game afterwards are stellar in my books. She's no Rite of the Raging Storm but at 6 damage per circuit she still gets there eventually and unlike the aforementioned Rite she actually affects the board the turn that she comes into play by "Slagstorming" it. That's extremely relevant and makes her a very unique finisher for this style of deck in that sense. Otherwise she's a decent draw engine for Red which is something that the color sorely needs. 2 cards a turn is still 2 cards a turn even if it forces you to play a tap-out control style deck that works at Sorcery speed. Hell, that's all of my Red decks anyways so that doesn't exactly bother me. Worst comes to worst you nuke the board for 4 and call it a day. That's not a good use of 6 mana but its passable. Overall this is a very middling card and not one that I'd feel hard-pressed to acquire.
Grade C+
Fall of the Titans: Outside of 2HG and similar formats I don't think that this card is especially playable. If I'm going to Mana Geyser into an X spell I want something that will actually win the game on the spot (Comet Storm). That being said if 2HG (or even Emperor) is your format of choice then this card is ridonkulous. Play 4 and never look back.
Grade D+
Goblin Dark-Dwellers: Red doesn't have much that it can blindly jam at 5 CMC and GDD is a powerful alternative to things like Siege-Gang Commander and Zealous Conscripts which don't seem to pack the same punch that they used to (at least for me). I've played with this card a fair amount, generally in the context of 4x Anger of the Gods decks since I like to start most of my lists with 4-6 mass removal spells anyways (Slagstorm/Flamebreak and such tend to make up the balance). I've also loved it alongside Price of Progress and Browbeat but those cards are very hit-or-miss and I wouldn't expect them to work for everyone. Regardless I've been loving my AOE Flametongue Kavu as a whole as it typically has a much more noticeable impact than most of Red's other offerings. It combos naturally with all of its primary synergy spells (Flameshadow Conjuring, Sneak Attack, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, etc.) and even in nightmare scenarios it's a still a large, evasive threat. Since I'm generally a fan of fielding 1-2 equipment in my creature-based decks (so that you can come over-the-top of people in the midgame if needed) the evasion is much more relevant that people often given credit for, especially when it's wielding something like Bonehoard. Otherwise it's a Goblin which is easily Red's strongest tribe and the fact that it can recur things like Hordeling Outburst is decent. This tends to be more relevant in EDH/Cube than in Constructed (Siege-Gang Commander OP) but much like anything with the "Wizard" or "Elf" tag hanging out with the right crowd goes a long way to boosting a card's playability. Overall I've been extremely impressed with this card and consider it to be a staple. You do have to "build around it" to some extent, it's not a "free" addition to any Red deck, but in the right shells its easily one of the more powerful Red 5 drops in the entire game. There's countless cards in various color combos (or even mono-Red) that you can pair with this thing and as long as you have 2-3 targets per GDD in your deck you should typically be able to cast them for value. From Molten Psyche to Boom // Bust (yes you get to Armageddon!) to Breaking Point there's a ton of powerful options at your disposal.
Grade B
Kozilek's Return: A Volcanic Fallout that 5s the board for free when I cast my Artisan of Kozilek? Are you freaking kidding me Wizards? One of my favorite multiplayer decks of all time is DragonForce which is basically anything that curves a card like Assemble the Legion into a card like Jokulhaups. Cast big thing that wins the game on its own, blow up the world, win. What makes this card so stupidly powerful is that instead of having to combo-off over 2 turns this thing wipes the board immediately and for free! It's a total blow-out both early and late which makes it a fairly brainless auto-include in Big Red decks that curve out into Eldrazi.
Grade B-
Closing Thoughts: While Red didn't receive any bombs on the same level as cards such as Eldrazi Displacer and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet what it lacks in quality it makes up for in quantity. Chandra, Flamecaller, Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Kozilek's Return all have solid competitive applications in decks that can properly support their niche offerings. While you can't blindly jam either of them into a generic Red list and expect to experience long-run success the power-level is certainly there if you're willing to do a bit of legwork for it.
Green
Oath of Nissa: The subject of the Green Preordain has been beaten to death by now but funnily enough my opinion of this card has decreased dramatically since its release. Whereas I initially believed that it would be a 4-of auto-include in any (mostly) creature-based deck I'm rather indifferent to its inclusion at this point. It brings consistency but generally at the cost of either threat density or speed and as such I haven't experienced a noticeable improvement in overall win % when fielding it. Your decks become more consistent but (generally) less explosive and weaker to removal which makes it significantly less important that I initially believed. The reality is that Green already has access to "the best 1 drops" in the form of cards such as Carpet of Flowers and Utopia Sprawl and anyone who casts those instead will typically have a stronger showing throughout the match. It also can't be Kessig Wolf Runned, Lurking Predators doesn't hit it, Glimpse of Nature doesn't trigger it, Birthing Pod can't fetch it, Survival of the Fittest can't bin it, on and and and on. Again, the card clearly isn't outright bad or anything but at the same time I don't feel as though you need them to build a solid creature-based deck in Green. My "best decks" don't even consider running it at this point whereas I would always play a card like Green Sun's Zenith or Lurking Predators.
Grade B
Vile Redeemer: I can't remember the last time that I've seen someone cast a "Fresh Meat" spell of any flavour nor a time when the effect was truly worthwhile. Even in MP circles swimming in mass removal this type of threat doesn't "get there" nearly enough to justify its inclusion.
Grade D-
World Breaker: In formats/metas where Sylvan Primordial is banned this thing does a decent impersonation. The recursion aspect is moderately relevant and the synergy that it has with Kozilek's Return is absurd. Overall I'm not blown away by this thing but that mostly boils down to the fact that Sylvan Primordial is horrendously overpowered.
Grade C-
Zendikar Resurgent: This card has done some fairly serious work in the EDH circles that I frequent as the combination of "mana doubler" and "draw engine" is downright insane if your games run long enough to abuse both. In Constructed I haven't found a great home for this card outside of silly things like Academy Rector but I do think that it's playable in ramp decks that are mostly creature-based. The biggest problem that Zendikar Resurgent suffers from is that it competes directly with Lurking Predators which is basically a strictly better + cheaper version of the card. No deck realistically wants eight copies of that effect but I've ran 1-2 in addition to 4x Lurking Predators (everything else in the deck was a land or creature) to moderate success. Realistically my sample-size is too low to say anything definitive as the card often felt overkill when played in conjunction with Lurking Predators (I either lost horribly early on or crushed the lategame) but either way I don't think that this card is a joke. If you can pick them up on the cheap then you probably should because much like Alhammarret's Archive (a criminally underplayed card by the way) I think that people are going to look at this as a win-more, expensive, do-nothing piece of crap when in reality sticking 2 extremely effects on a durable permanent is almost always a recipe for success. Maybe Lurking Predators has to be banned in your meta before this card can shine but there's definitely a world where this card carries in the lategame in Green-based creature decks.
Grade C+
Closing Thoughts:Oath of Nissa brings some much needed consistency to any Green creature-based deck and so everyone should probably acquire some at some point in their Magic careers.
Multicolor
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim: This is probably the most overrated card in the set unless you truly believe that Deadly Recluse is a powerhouse. Even as the SoulSisters champion I've never been especially impressed by this card and haven't run more than 1-2 (if any) in my lists. In order for this card to truly go-off you kinda need to be playing with Mistveil Plains and Squadron Hawks which is a significantly more mana intensive engine than most people realize. The problem with this card is that it doesn't do anything other than block until you find yourself in a position where a card like Test of Endurance would have won the game anyways. I'll concede that I've definitely gotten some real value sac'ing my Ajani's Pridemates and Karlov of the Ghost Councils to gain some mad life but by no means does that automatically solve any of the problems that you're likely facing. All this to say that this is a more of a 1-2 of card than it is a 4-of given that more often than not it's simply a decent blocker as opposed to a card that can actually win games of Magic.
Grade C-
Cliffhaven Vampire: Decent playable in the BW Allies drain deck that acts as another combo enabler for Exquisite Blood. That's more for EDH than anything else but hey, to each their own.
Grade F+
Jori En, Ruin Diver: Izzet is my least favorite color combination by a wide margin which means that whenever a card like Nin, the Pain Artist or Jori En, Ruin Diver gets printed I can only think to myself how "someone other than me is going to enjoy playing with that thing." Blue Red seems to suffer from what I like to call the "Guttersnipe problem" where every deck seems to only contain a small number of cards that actually matter. When they inevitability get answered (and they always, always ALWAYS do) the player sits around and does nothing until he or she loses. They may have drawn 40 cards, killed 100 creatures, flipped 20 coins and any number of other feats but ultimately the decks can never actually win the game against multiple competent adversaries. While I understand that this isn't the colors' fault it still skews my perception of them to the point where 15 years later I refuse to touch the combo with a 50-foot pole. I have no doubt that someone out there is going to build a Jori En, Ruin Diver deck filled with Ponders, Preordains, etc. that casts good removal (such as Anger of the Gods) and draws lots of cards but I'm curious to see if anyone can actually build a winning UR deck that converts all of these small value plays into something that "actually matters."
Grade C-
Mina and Denn, Wildborn: I think that most people have cooled-off on this card enough that I don't have to add much else. This never has and never will be an Exploration of sorts and so you shouldn't be playing with them. It's a slow, bad card that doesn't even do anything.
Grade F+
Closing Thoughts: Nothing to see here.
Land
Mirrorpool: I tried playing with this card about 4 or 5 times before I finally thought to myself "never again." Not only is it an ETBT colorless land but the copy effects are relegated to your spells/creatures only. For all the instances where it screwed me on colors/tempo not once did I go on to think "thank the Lord that included this 4 mana Twincast in my deck to pull me out of this bind." At this point I have no intention of ever fielding the thing again and I'm strongly urging caution with its inclusion. It's stupidly weak the vast majority of the time and I can guarantee you that Myriad Landscape/Karoos or whatever are vastly superior options in most decks. The one and only exception is any list with Sun Titan (and hopefully Eldrazi Displacer) since that's a more-or-less infinite value chain that doesn't cost you anything other than running some ETBT lands. While this hinders your ability to activate Emeria, the Sky Ruin it's still an extremely powerful value engine that's worth pursuing. That is, if you're actively recurring this thing (Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds) then it's decent but otherwise steer clear IMO.
Grade D+
Sea Gate Wreckage: For the life of me I never understood the hype surrounding this card. While it never struck me as being especially useful I tested a couple of them in various shells (may as well right?) and even though I went in expecting nothing I still left disappointed. I activated them all of twice in roughly 20 games and at no point did those extra cards come close to making a difference. I understand that it's a land that taps for mana and that doesn't ETBT but it's certainly not "free" to run and the ability is marginal at best. Your deck either has to be very low-to-the-ground or field very little card draw and none of those things sound appealing to me in the slightest. I'll concede that I never went out of my way to build my decks around the thing but I think that people grossly overestimate the value which this thing figures to provide in a typical game of Magic. My advice would be to max out at one copy tops as a lategame draw engine but don't kid yourself into jamming 4 under the assumption that you'll get good mileage out of them. The card is marginally playable at best.
Grade D+
Closing Thoughts
While some may feel compelled to judge sets on their worst cards I personally take the opposite approach and focus on my sights on their most prolific offerings. As such I personally consider Oath of the Gatewatch to be a resounding success if for no other reason than the cards Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Eldrazi Displacer. These are among the most competitive multiplayer cards of all time and will remain relevant for decades to come in all likelihood. Moreover, I personally believe that Kozilek, the Great Distortion is close to being on the same power-level as Void Winnower which is among the most devastating and disruptive threats in the game. While he needs to be paired with a hefty amount of ramp and/or card draw the prospect of "unlimited" Force of Wills seems absolutely insane to me and I cannot wait to jam him in every format imaginable. Otherwise OGW brings us top-tier offerings such as Oath of Nissa and Goblin Dark-Dwellers which won't be making the same waves as Kalitas and Eldrazi Displacer but that will still bring a fair amount of consistency and utility to their respective colors. All-in-all I love what OGW has done for the multiplayer community and look forward to many more sets such as this.
Great review, gotta say I agree with nearly everything you say. Gatewatch was a colossal disappointment, for me anyways, in terms of cards with actual use or purpose. Outside of all those Eldrazi shenanigans, which I have to say I do not like the Eldrazi, there was basically zilch for anyone in the Casual circle.
World Breaker is a nice Sylvan Primordial-lite for those metas that ban/restrict It, but otherwise the card is still pretty lackluster.
Kozilek, the Great Distortion is fairly solid. One of my mates runs one in his "everything deck", pretty brutal counterspelling capabilities there.
Agreed on pretty much all points, especially Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim. She looked like such a great value creature and ended up just trading off every time I used her. Karlov of the Ghost Council came out at pretty much the same time and does way more relevant work in the BW lifegain/Soul Sisters deck. World Breaker is a pretty lackluster card and pretty much only has use when paired with Kozilek's Return. My biggest beef with OGW is that the cards I actually want are a million dollars and everything else feels like Limited chaff (although it definitely improved the BFZ draft format by quite a bit).
I was incredibly disappointed with her as well. On cardboard she looks solid, interesting and definitely interactive, but in actual practice? She just trades off, nearly every time. Perhaps her talents could be better suited to an EDH deck?
How's that? Even if half the rares/mythics spike, that just makes the other half even cheaper. Correlation between "good tournament cards" and "good multiplayer cards" isn't 100%.
My apologies for being unclear. I'm an extremely competitive player and even though you only see me post on the MP forums believe me when I say that I'm an active member of every format. From Pauper to Vintage I follow every metagame, own a competitive deck (I have to proxy Power though), etc. In the past few months on numerous occasions I've lost Magic "friends" to Modern bannings (my friend's Bloom deck got banned, another lost his Twin) and since Modern is a 1k format they're basically done with the game for now. Standard isn't any better and whereas before I had a large group of friends who could buy-in for a couple hundred dollars that's not possible any more and so many of them have quit the game (at least for now). People can say "just play Atarka Red or a budget deck with no Jaces blah blah blah" but for people who've been playing for over a decade that isn't an enticing option and most of them would rather take a break from the game than play a noncompetitive deck (or one that they don't enjoy piloting like Atarka Red). Note that I'm still friends with these players, it's moreso than that a lot of them are done with the game for now which means that it's harder to get people together for a game of Cube or whatever. If you're all going to FNM or EDH on Wednesdays then it's easy but otherwise it's hard to find the time to get people together. Hope that clears things up.
It depends entirely on what your deck is trying to do and what synergies are present. My The Mimeoplasm Reanimator deck will never cut Kederekt Leviathan whereas my Archaeomancer Control deck couldn't make the swap fast enough. Crush is the stronger card in general but given enough "creatures matter" effects and/or a lack of cheap spells in your deck then you're still going to want to use the Leviathan.
This is another great question. The Cryptologist was actually the last Blue 1 drop that I removed from my multiplayer guide. While it's true that the card is great if you can cast it on turn 1 and don't have a turn 2 play I've frequently found myself in situations where I've drawn them on turns 3-6 and struggled to find the time the level them up. They're also extremely weak when paired with mass bounce such as Whelming Wave and/or Crush of Tentacles which are cards that I think that basically every Blue deck should be playing with. Control decks need Wrath of Gods in order to compete and mass bounce + Levers doesn't work. They're also terrible in multiples (whereas Looters are fine) and even though Archivist is a powerful card I find that drawing cards is never a problem when I'm playing Blue. Even when I play my 4 player games online I still get absolutely insane value from my Mystic Remoras, Rhystic Studys, Trade Secrets, Recurring Insights, Consecrated Sphinxes, etc. so I never feel as though card quantity is an issue. The looter is only there to smooth my draws and provide me with a touch of board presence (the difference between having "something" on board vs having nothing is quite astonishing at times) and since I never expect the card to draw hate (why would you?) I find that they survive for a very long time and, in general, provide much more value than cards like Preordain.
What it boils down to, for me, is that Merfolk Looter is a card that I can blindly jam in any Blue deck as a 4-of and it will always do its job. Far too often that hasn't been the case when fielding Cryptologists (the card is miserable when you have a bunch of Whelming Waves in your deck) to the point where I had to give it the axe.
Perhaps you could supply your thoughts on the best time to buy the card (as in before it goes up even further/whenever/when the hype dies down/when it rotates/never). That way you would help people decide for themselves when/if to get good-but-expensive cards.
My biggest concern with this is that I'm not a financial analyst by any means nor am I am I "professional" player. Magic is a hobby that I take very seriously and play competitively but as a Canadian I'm only privy to a handful of major events and since I have no desire to travel I've never made any attempt to grind PW points. I don't try to break formats by testing with teams for weeks nor do I grind MODO for hours perfecting my Standard/Modern brews. I wait until the format gets solved, find a deck that I like and play it. I couldn't care less about duel Magic outside of sanctioned events, I literally haven't dueled someone "for fun" in ~7 years, so when cards like Drana and Thought-Knot Seer and Kozilek's Return get spoiled I don't spend any time thinking about their value due to their competitive applications in duel settings. At some point someone will post a broken deck that interests me (Rally the Ancestors OP!) and I'll play that and otherwise I don't care about anything other than multiplayer. Since MP doesn't normally drive card prices I'm clueless as to how much cards will cost in the long-run.
Yeah, Canada doesn't see as many Tournaments or otherwise sanctioned events. Not that I would bother to go really, the whole Anything-Not-Casual scene is really not for me. I attended the pre-release for Gatewatch because some mates wanted to try it out, what a waste of time & money. I am not a jank player. It takes me weeks, months, sometimes years to work on a deck. Giving me a bunch of random cards and half an hour to build something? I'm terrible at that. Give me a week, a search engine and a theme I'll pump something far more respectable out and smash face.
But in the end, WotC doesn't make Magic for the Casual scene. Even Duel Decks, Event Decks, etc. are only meant to grab a Casual or New Player and convert them into a Standard machine - which is where WotC makes It's real money. Sure, sure, they talk about Casual play now and then, but it's on the back burner you know? From The Vault is at least sticking a round, there are some good cards to be had for the Casual player within them. My Rolling Earthquake is the foil version from Annihilation, and it is an amazing burn card to field in multiplayer games. Too bad Berserk is still way over a hundred $.
Makes sense, and I guess I should play more Merfolk Looters.
Bear in mind that affordability and flexibility are very important variables in my valuations. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is strictly better than the Looter but far too expensive for most people to afford. There's also cards like Renowned Weaponsmith and Augur of Bolas that work well in some decks but can't be blindly jammed into anything Blue. Otherwise there's cards like Snapcaster Mage, Phantasmal Image and Gilded Drake that are all extremely powerful but they're also conditional, expensive, not 2 drops and some of them can be hard for newer players to use effectively. All this to say that Merfolk Looter is the closest thing that I can find to a card that's A) reasonably powerful (it's not God tier but I'm happy enough to field it) and B) universally playable. The only true strike against it is that it's not the easiest card to use if you're very new to the game but at some point my hands are tied because I'm not a miracle worker who can spin silk into gold. There's a finite subset of Blue 2 drop critters and as much as I wish that we were swimming in powerful, flexible and cheap options that's not reality. Looter is cheap, reliable, flexible while still being reasonably powerful (I do think that the effect is quite powerful in the context of a grindy MP match that drags on for 8+ turns) and even if the card dies to removal or whatever I couldn't care less. If I have to chump with it, so be it. More often than not I get a lot more mileage out of Looter than I do a card like Preordain (not to say that Preordain is bad or anything though) and I do believe that adding anything to your board makes a big psychological difference so overall I'm a fan of the card.
What I want to know is... suppose someone made you an offer you couldn't refuse and bought your entire Magic collection, which cards would you buy again? I'm sure you wouldn't just restrict yourself to cards of $2 or less. I know I'd spend $10 on a Demonic Tutor, for instance. Telling people that a card is expensive" isn't teaching them anything they didn't already know and/or could see for themselves. The real question is whether it's worth it.
In my defense I basically already do this. I happily promote extremely powerful + unique cards like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Kozilek, the Great Distortion that don't have reasonable alternatives and that can warp games on their own. Kozilek's Return, while powerful, can be replaced by cards like Earthquake and Wildfire to similar effect. I know that the "free buyback" is technically unique but the idea here is that Red doesn't struggle to keep the board clear. Kozilek, on the other hand, can't be interchanged with anything. My current EDH deck is Sidisi Reanimator and when you Necropotence and/or Necrologia for 20 cards there's no other card that you can Entomb/Buried Alive and then Animate Dead/Dance of the Dead/Necromancy to seal up the game quite like Kozilek can.
Still, I do agree that I should probably leave the financial BS out of the review. If I'm excited about a card I should leave it at that because complaining about the price may very well prevent someone from buying the card for "no good reason." I'll keep that in mind the next time around and keep the focus on the cards' strengths.
Wizards has explicitly stated in countless articles posted on the mothership website that they tailor huge portions of their design space to casual players. This is why popular themes such as mill and lifegain are continually revisited even though they have no competitive applications. Scrambleverse and the throngs of other "big dumb Red spells" aren't churned out by the dozens because WoTC believes they will be the next Modern Superstars. Rather, they make concerted efforts to tailor to individuals of all skills levels, even ones who play for fun at kitchen tables.
I'm not saying that WoTC is run by MENSA geniuses but at the same time they're not idiots. To say that they don't tailor their products to their largest demographics is an unfair assessment of their competency.
Wizards has explicitly stated in countless articles posted on the mothership website that they tailor huge portions of their design space to casual players.
I'll believe it when I see it.
From the price gouging of products from Commander to Event Decks and Duel Decks, to the complete lack of interest in keeping the Secondary Market in check, WotC hasn't done much to give them any accolades from me. Maybe they do, but my wallet doesn't agree with their business practices.
Wizards has explicitly stated in countless articles posted on the mothership website that they tailor huge portions of their design space to casual players.
I'll believe it when I see it.
From the price gouging of products from Commander to Event Decks and Duel Decks, to the complete lack of interest in keeping the Secondary Market in check, WotC hasn't done much to give them any accolades from me. Maybe they do, but my wallet doesn't agree with their business practices.
Back when I was a kid I played Pokemon TCG, Digimon TCG a bit of Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic. Want to know what my first edition Charizard is worth? Nothing. My Digimon cards? I'd have to pay the city dump to take them off my hands. Most TCGs fail because they don't focus on the "collectible" aspect of card games. If you invest in something that immediately becomes worthless then people will, over time, lose any and all incentive to continue investing. MTG hasn't survived for all of these decades on the backs of incompetent bafoons. For better or for worse magic's success can largely be attributed to the fact that you're legitimately investing in a product that has value and that will continue to accrue value over time. I'm not saying that Wizards is perfect nor that I agree with every decision that they've ever made but at the same time I'm not going to fault them for employing practices that will ensure the longevity of the game. They could try harder to "meet us in the middle" so to speak but printing a million Force of Wills and Wastelands isn't necessarily a good thing for the game in the long run.
Of course, I also believe that nothing has any value until someone else gives it value. Black Lotus is just a hunk of cardboard played in an imaginary game that doesn't exist unless people choose to believe it does and give it rules. As the Buddhists would say:
Of course, I also believe that nothing has any value until someone else gives it value. Black Lotus is just a hunk of cardboard played in an imaginary game that doesn't exist unless people choose to believe it does and give it rules. As the Buddhists would say:
"Life is an illusion."
I'd add:
"That someone else makes you pay for."
Are you trying to make a point or change the subject? I'm justifying their actions from a financial perspective. As a company their only goal is to generate profits for HASBRO's shareholders and given that MTG is the most successful TCG of all time I don't think that you can give WoTC too much flak. For better or for worse their decisions have enabled them to avoid the pitfalls that dozens of other TCGs have succumbed to and given that MTG is going stronger than ever they're clearly doing something right that no other TCG (except maybe Yugioh) has even come close to replicating. We could sit here all day and cite random philosophical fluff but unless it's pertinent to the discussion at hand then I don't see the value in doing so. Yeah, we as humans assign value to things like money and cars and food and Black Lotuses and quite frankly it doesn't matter who/what/where/when/how/why we decided to do so. Life isn't an illusion, this is our reality. That is, this is our one and only chance to live our one and only life.
Are you trying to make a point or change the subject?
Making a point. Money is money after all. How much money do most Casual's have to spend on the Magic scene? 40$ for each Commander deck? 30$ for each Duel Deck?
How much actual value is that buy going to provide for that Casual? If the products that WotC makes for the Casual market are primarily jank with little to no actual value or synergy, what's the point? Money. WotC has to make money off the Casual scene somehow, even if it means giving them the raw end of the deal every time.
Are you trying to make a point or change the subject?
Making a point. Money is money after all. How much money do most Casual's have to spend on the Magic scene? 40$ for each Commander deck? 30$ for each Duel Deck?
How much actual value is that buy going to provide for that Casual? If the products that WotC makes for the Casual market are primarily jank with little to no actual value or synergy, what's the point? Money. WotC has to make money off the Casual scene somehow, even if it means giving them the raw end of the deal every time.
Just my view though.
A corporation's raison d'etre is to generate profits. That's literally its one and only job.
As always, many many thanks for producing this--you usually do a very good job of it. This list feels a little incomplete, given all the cards up for reviewing. Do you really think this is ALL of the ones worth talking about? I gotta say though; I feel like the individual analyses lack the proper (and usual) context when you don't include a simple letter or number grade. Maybe that's too constrictive though--i could see both sides. I missed them though.
On to specifics.
Endbringer Remember when you wrote (re: Blade of Selves) Easiest buyout of my life? Well, I feel the same about this card. I actually saw someone selling playsets for $1.99 + free ship, and I bought every single one he had. Been patiently looking for more like that ever since.. This guy feels almost like an Eldrazi planeswalker and is absolutely being overlooked, maybe even in Modern/Standard. Whatever--card is completely stupid. Try it.
SUPER interested to try out Eldrazi Displacer in W/U Blink alongside most of the creatures you mentioned in its writeup, including another you disparaged in another just below it.
As always, many many thanks for producing this--you usually do a very good job of it. This list feels a little incomplete, given all the cards up for reviewing. Do you really think this is ALL of the ones worth talking about? I gotta say though; I feel like the individual analyses lack the proper (and usual) context when you don't include a simple letter or number grade. Maybe that's too constrictive though--i could see both sides. I missed them though.
I glanced over the list and nothing jumped out at me as being a card worth discussing. That isn't to say that none of the other cards have potential applications but this time around I didn't feel like reviewing cards like Expedite (playable in Jeskai Ascendancy combo) and/or cards that might get there one day (such as Kazuul's Toll Collector). I did delete about 6-7 entries that I would have otherwise listed but I think for the time being I'm going to forgo anything that's far too niche to warrant serious consideration.
I agree that this isn't my best work hence my hesitance to even make this post.
Endbringer Remember when you wrote (re: Blade of Selves) Easiest buyout of my life? Well, I feel the same about this card. This guy feels almost like an Eldrazi planeswalker and is absolutely being overlooked, maybe even in Modern/Standard. Whatever--card is completely stupid. Try it.
It's a mana-intensive 6 drop that dies to removal and that requires a fair amount of colorless mana in order to effectively utilize. I agree that it was overlooked but historically these kinds of cards almost never "get there" and initially myself (and others too I'm sure) mostly dismissed it as a result. I agree that the card is quite powerful in practice but I don't think that it's nearly as obvious as it was with Blade of Selves.
SUPER interested to try out Eldrazi Displacer in W/U Blink alongside most of the creatures you mentioned in its writeup, including another you disparaged in another just below it.
For the record I don't think that Blade Splicer is unplayable but at the same time it's not a card that I scramble to add to my decks. It's a decent defensive threat that you can feel "pretty good" about blinking but rarely is it something that will outright win games for you.
For multiplayer? Not really no. In EDH I don't mind the card but I didn't put much emphasis on EDH this time around and outside of the format this isn't really what I want to be blinking/bouncing/recurring in my UW decks. The card is clearly decent and an obvious duel powerhouse but in MP it's just a 2/3 for 3 that disrupts a single adversary and anything that would make is truly degenerate could easily use other cards to outright win the game. Given the choice of bouncing this or Peregrine Drake with my Eldrazi Displacer it's not hard to see which card wins out in the end.
Specifically, that comparison...I should've mentioned the $0.50 price point ($1.99 for 4) FIRST and then made that comparison. That context was key to my statement. At $1.99 a playset, it was basically same decision in my mind. I will be shocked if this card isn't a few bucks at some point, although the prerelease version certainly puts a ceiling on it.
Just checking, but... are you aware that this is exactly what they are doing right now?
Except that's not even close to reality. The print run for Eternal Masters is ridiculously small and cards like FoW and Wasteland are all going to be printed at rare/mythic. Seriously, call your local LGS and ask them how many boxes of EM that they'll receive.
When's the last time you saw Man-o'-War dominate multiplayer games?
Fair point, doesn't happen often unless he has major busted flicker assistance and I noticed they did just print a probably-better one of those, buncha psychos in R&D if you ask me..
Or, you might have a better chance if you run a far-superior version. I think Reflector Mage is certainly that. If you do so little as replace your Man-o'-Wars with this guy, just a simple 1:1 replacement and do literally nothing else to your deck, assuming it is a dedicated shell that supports multiple blinking/flicker type of effects, you are going to get several lightyears more mileage out of Reflector Mage.
The tax effect...I mean, you're doing 99% of 'one of the meanest things to do to someone in a game of MtG'. You're not ******* their draws, that's absolutely HEINOUS, but it's the next worst possible thing--stuck in their hand doing absolutely nothing for them. Plus, in MP, it's even WORSE. You suddenly have to wait for the entire table to take a whole 'nother turn, and while you wait to cast your threat again, every single player is drawing more potential ammo to prevent it this second time.
In most (surely not ALL, but most) MP games I play, the threshold is never 'every single thing' for this to cripple a player anyway--just the one or two most threatening things that will buy you the breathing room you need for a turn or two, or, with a bit more luck, clear the way for your teammates to start their assault.
And surviving a ubiquitous sweeper Pyroclasm too. Doesn't make him suddenly walk on water but it's gotta be worth something in MP.
In the exact same decks, I would value this guy at a rate of 1.5x or even 2x Man o' War. What he does is that much better than a simple bounce effect.
I agree with you when it comes to Matter Reshaper. I played around with it in my Green/Post Eldrazi hodgepodge a couple weeks back and aside from the novelty of it being new, it was thoroughly "meh." At 3 CMC, I'd rather just replace it with more rocks/tutors. What use is a potential tempo enabler without consistency?
In the exact same decks, I would value this guy at a rate of 1.5x or even 2x Man o' War. What he does is that much better than a simple bounce effect.
Yeah but when was the last time anyone has put that card in their multiplayer deck? Be it Cube/EDH/Constructed I've never seen anyone talk about the thing as if it's a known quantity. No one plays with marginal tempo threats that only affect single opponents and that aren't useful vs creatures with ETB effects (aka 50% of the creatures played in the format).
Just checking, but... are you aware that this is exactly what they are doing right now?
Except that's not even close to reality. The print run for Eternal Masters is ridiculously small and cards like FoW and Wasteland are all going to be printed at rare/mythic. Seriously, call your local LGS and ask them how many boxes of EM that they'll receive.
This. I'm pretty confident that my playset of Alliance FoWs won't lose value over the long run. In fact, demand for it may go up as people open 1 FoW and then want to buy 3 more to make their playset... same thing happened with Tarmagoyf.
Waited for this review, Prid3. I agree, this set was absolute butt. I can't wait for some multiplayer fun in Conspiracy 2, but for now I think I'll stick to playing board games while I wait for this crappy year of Magic sets to blow over. Wasn't much of a fan of 2015, especially BFZ block. It's a shame that Magic had to come to this, at least we are playing the (imo) only decent format left. I'm not going to pay any more money to play midrange in standard or Eldrazi in Modern. Even draft is sub-par. Overall, I'm not too happy with how Magic is going. Especially all of these idiotic price spikes.
/rant
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Greetings fellow multiplayer enthusiasts! My name is Prid3 and I'm a 15+ year veteran of the game who's been playing Magic: the Gathering since the Winter of 2000. While I've followed and played the game at a competitive-level across every major duel format the bulk of my personal playtime has been spent at kitchen tables duking it out in large multiplayer matches. Be it Cube, Constructed or EDH I've played tens of thousands of hours of multiplayer Magic in my life and have since made it my goal to impart some of that knowledge and experience on to you. As such this set review is solely focused towards the multiplayer crowd with an emphasis on budget-minded, fair Magic that adheres to a Legacy-esque banned/restricted list. While I'll still touch on degenerate combos and unfair applications I understand that not everyone takes the game as seriously as my own circles and as such I try to balance my reviews to ensure that they're applicable to players of all levels. From turn 1 kills to turn 20 slugfests I'll do my best to keep these relevant for anyone and everyone who routinely sits down at a multiplayer table.
Before moving on I'll quickly touch on some important book-keeping notes that you should be made aware of before delving deeper into this set review. First, know that I never evaluate every single card in a new set. There's absolutely no reason to repeat "this card was designed for duel formats/Limited" hundreds of times so don't expect me to touch on chaff. I'll hit on what I consider to be the key multiplayer cards with an emphasis on the ones that you should make a concerted effort to acquire. Moreover, bear in mind that all ratings discussed in this evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt. It's virtually impossible to give a card a grade that accurately reflects its worth in Cube, Constructed and EDH and so for the purposes of this guide I slant it mostly towards Constructed. I'll touch on Cube and EDH whenever I feel that it's especially applicable but otherwise my primary emphasis will be on a card's 60-card Constructed applications. Finally, I'm not looking to pin down the perfect letter grade for every single card. I'm merely trying to provide you with a rough estimation of its overall worth.
Grading Scale:
A: Oppressive cards that completely warp the game around them. These are format definers that figure to dominate games and crush opponents who aren't playing with cards of a similar power-level. These are must-have competitive staples with limitless potential. Think Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Humility, Consecrated Sphinx, Sylvan Primordial, Repercussion.
B: Extremely formidable cards that will allow you to pull ahead of the pack. Although they lack the visceral overpowered-ness that A's possess winning decks should still be clamoring to field them. This makes them top-priority acquisition targets for players of all skill-levels. Think Syphon Mind, Earthquake, Wrath of God, Rite of Replication, Woodland Bellower.
C: Powerful cards that winning decks will want to play. A list full of these won't crush a table but a solid foundation of C's should be good enough to keep you competitive. Think Wight of Precinct Six, Clever Impersonator, Taurean Mauler, Thragtusk, Restoration Angel.
D: Marginal playables that can flesh out your lists in the absence of reasonable alternatives. I strongly encourage you to focus your efforts elsewhere if it's a realistic option since they're unlikely to yield impressive win %s.
F: Extremely weak cards that shouldn't be played under any circumstances.
+/-: Used to denote a better or worse N. That is, a B+ represents a strong B whereas C- implies a weak C.
Colorless
Kozilek, the Great Distortion: I wrote my full thoughts on the card here but the TL;DR is that I think that this is one of the best cards in the set. Giving every color access to "unlimited"Mental Misstep-Counterspell hybrids is completely overpowered as it turns already strong cards (such as Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, Greater Good, Deathreap Ritual, Syphon Mind and Consecrated Sphinx) into virtual game winners. Kozilek is insane both as a revival target and a generic fatty to ramp out and pairs extremely well with Black/Blue's insane draw options (such as Mystic Remora and Necrologia) while naturally slotting into Green's rampy gameplan. Careful Study -> Animate Dead is a big game in Ub Control and Green can always go Wild Growth/Utopia Sprawl -> Basalt Monolith/Somberwald Sage -> Sylvan Primordial -> Kozilek for the instant refuel on turn 4/5. Most people are probably aware that BUG are the 3 strongest multiplayer colors to begin with which makes Kozilek one of the best fatties for the best color combos. Much like Void Winnower I think that global disruption is criminally underrated and that everyone unfairly assumes that someone is always going to have a clean answer and/or that your "goal" should be to prevent every spell from ever resolving. Lately I've been jamming this guy alongside Crypt Ghast/Sylvan Primordial in decks with powerful mana rocks (Basalt Monolith, Worn Powerstone, Hedron Archive, Thran Dynamo) to great effect. It's a one-card win condition that can effectively disrupt a large number of adversaries while bringing something completely new to the table in form of free Counterspells for every color.
Grade B+
Matter Reshaper: I wasn't high on this card at first glance and in testing it's been even more marginal than I feared. The colorless requirement is a real cost and unlike threats such as Coiling Oracle you don't get any immediate value other than a worthless body. Moreover, I think that cards like Solemn Simulacrum are overrated in general because "value" isn't the same thing as "game winning value" and far too often people look at "safe" 2-for-1s and assume that it's automatically a good idea to run them. The best reason to invest in these kinds of cards, in my mind, is that they're A) still decent (albeit not amazing) and B) they can be played in any deck of any colors. Unfortunately that just plain isn't the case for the Reshaper and jamming a 3/2 for 3 isn't my idea of a strong turn early-game play.
Grade D+
Endbringer: Coming into OGW I thought that this card was unplayable trash and a total trap. Luckily for me I tested the card before commenting on it so now I can save myself the embarrassment of falsely calling this card out. WAIT! You didn't read that! In my experience these kinds of cards almost always fail to "get there" but this is a rare instance where I couldn't have been more wrong. All of the modes have been extremely relevant in my testing and I sometimes willfully run this over Mind's Eye in decks that can reasonably support it. 2 mana to draw a card is still perfectly fine (I assumed that it would be far too taxing, it isn't) and having a huge body to gum up the ground is sweet when you're mostly trying to sit back and draw cards. It's also a decent form of removal and the fact that it answers threatening creatures comes up way more often than I initially gave credit for. Even the "tap mode" has been stellar for me since I've frequently used it to tap someone's "Walls" over ~2 turns and kill them with a Bonehoard or whatever. I highly recommend acquiring this card and slotting it into any deck that can support the colorless mana requirements. Cloudpost and Urza's Mine lands are the easiest enablers but any colorless mana (lands and/or ramp) can realistically work. After all, it's not as though you need to draw a card on each upkeep to make the thing worthwhile. Drawing 1-2 extra cards per circuit while killing/disrupting/beating-down is amazing value for a 6 drop.
Grade B
Closing Thoughts: Both Kozilek and Endbringer are amazing finishers in any deck that can properly support them. I expect Kozilek to leave his biggest mark in EDH whereas Endbringer strikes me more as a Constructed all-star for Cloudpost/Urzatron decks in decks that want actual bodies as opposed to durdly draw engines such as Mind's Eye.
Call the Gatewatch: This set has a lot of "Planeswalker matters" cards (mostly Enchantments) but for brevity's sake I'm going to use this entry to address all of them at all. I personally find that Planeswalkers are hard enough to protect when you're curving out with threats let alone when you're casting things that literally have no impact on the board. All things being equal it almost always makes sense to remove them at the earliest convenience which is why I've historically had such a harsh outlook on their competitive applications. I personally think that supporting "do nothing" engines with "do nothing" spells is a recipe for disaster and as such I think that all of these "Planeswalker matters" cards are incredibly weak.
Grade F+
Eldrazi Displacer: Blink-based Sun Titan/Training Grounds decks filled with all of the usual enters the battlefield (ETB) suspects love this thing. When compared to Flickerwisp it's clear that the card isn't amazing on turn 3 but since multiplayer (MP) games tend to be long and grindy as opposed to fast and aggressive you're often better-off prepping for the marathon as opposed to the sprint. It's also completely fine to play 4 of them given that they give you something to do with your mana each and every turn so it doesn't exactly matter if you "mulligan" by drawing a few too many every now and then. Otherwise go nuts blinking your Knight of the White Orchids, Blade Splicers, Angel of Finalitys, Thragtusks, whatever your heart desires. If you want to get really dirty then Peregrine Drake/Great Whale/Palinchron all say "hello!" but even outside of infinite combos this card does disgusting things in decks with Primordials and the like. Having now played with this card a fair amount I'll say that it's slightly worse than I originally thought mostly because of A) the colorless mana requirement and B) the fact that ~20% of the time it's merely a Nessian Courser but even in my fair decks the card does stupidly powerful things past a certain point and I've been extremely impressed with its performance as a whole. I've unhappily played other "bounce engines" such as Mistmeadow Witch to zero success whereas this one has felt genuinely powerful in the majority of my games. With respect to the best manabase to support it I recommend Cloudpost + Glimmerpost but feel free to work with whatever you've got.
Grade A
Linvala, the Preserver: White has desperately needed a Thragtusk to pair with its myriad of blink effects and while Linvala isn't the ideal candidate she's a solid first step. It's somewhat tragic that she's a nonbo with Restoration Angel but now that we have Eldrazi Displacer I don't feel nearly as bad about it. It's also unfortunate that they gave her the Timely Reinforcements restrictions but at the same time I can understand why Wizards didn't want a repeat of what happened when Thragtusk was legal in Standard. You're clearly not going to meet both requirements every time that you cast her but in multiplayer you'll almost always meet at least one of them and that's more than enough to justify running her out at basically any stage of the game. You can't do anything truly silly with her but as a generic 6 CMC threat that's resilient to removal it's hard to argue with what Linvala brings to the table. Her nightmare fail-case involves you having the most stuff and the most life which is a relatively good place to be and a 5/5 flier for 6 is still a card. To anyone wondering how she stacks-up to Sun Titan I've personally found her to be significantly worse but I do like having the option to run 1-2 if desired.
Grade C-
Wall of Resurgence: I think that this card is unplayable trash and I already know that it's going to be extremely overrated. Turning your lands into marginal threats is a downside as far as I'm concerned and neither a 3/3 nor an 0/6 are even remotely close to being worth part/all of a card. I get that you can stack the counters on the same land and that Sun Titan can recur it and blah blah blah but even then I would never put this in any of my decks. I don't even like Blade Splicer (I rarely-if-ever field it) and this strikes me as being many orders of magnitude worse. To anyone out there who thinks that this card is "insane value" or whatever I can guarantee you that it's Limited fodder at best.
Grade F+
Closing Thoughts: Eldrazi Displacer is a the most powerful Blink engine that we've ever seen in my opinion and I have it rated on the same level as Sun Titan. It's a total powerhouse staple with limitless applications and everyone should make a concerted effort to acquire them as some point.
Crush of Tentacles: Surge is at its best in Blue given the plethora of cheap cantrips and powerful card draw that the color has access to. I will gladly start all of my lists with 4x Ponder, Mystic Remora, Preordain, whatever between cards like Trade Secrets, Rhystic Study, Recurring Insight and Consecrated Sphinx I'm never hurting for cards at any stage of the game. Since I'm always happy to play cards like Whelming Wave and Evacuation as pseudo-Wrath of Gods Crush of Tentacles seem great for generic Blue Control decks in the market for a powerful sweeper. It's basically another copy of Kederekt Leviathan that goes "infinite" with Archaeomancer, loves Snapcaster Mage, adores Mizzix's Mastery, on and on and on. The biggest strike against this card is that it's still a 6+ CMC Sorcery and given that it's also somewhat conditional we're not looking at the next Cylonic Rift or anything. The card is still extremely powerful but a touch too slow to be a staple.
Grade C+
Hedron Alignment: I've been testing versions on this deck online with absolutely no success. Even in lists with cheap cantrips, Intuitions and Dig Through Times it's not nearly as consistent or powerful as I'd like it to be. You randomly lose games to counterspells, discard effects, Back to Natures and whereas most other combo decks could easily recover and combo-off at a later time there's basically no room for error with the Alignment. The deck also needs (as in NEEDS) Intuition and since that's not exactly a budget-friendly card it's not as though you can build this list on the cheap. Dig Through Time is also fairly essential but since that card is banned in legacy and restricted in Vintage I don't want to recommend fielding 4 of them in casual games. That's like telling someone to bring a Skullclamp or Balance deck to their casual kitchen table match in my mind. Unlike most people I was actually hyped for this card at first but having now played with it I'm glad that I didn't purchase any paper copies. Even in off-beat Manipulate Fate + Misthollow Griffin decks the card doesn't come together nearly enough to justify building around it.
Grade D+
Prophet of Distortion: In my Blue multiplayer guide I state (and defend) that Blue has 0 playable 1 CMC Creatures in a multiplayer setting. At one point I was relatively high on cards like Azure Mage as bad 2 drops who were decent lategame manasinks but I haven't been nearly as keen to field them in the past few years. Rather, I tend to jam Merfolk Looter when I'm looking for a generic 2 drop and I think that that's a better place to be in general. If you're playing in a meta where Azure Mage/Jushi Apprentice style cards pass muster then the Prophet is certainly playable in your Cloudpost decks but for the time being I'm off of these marginal 1-2 drops who're realistically still weak 8 drops.
Grade D
Closing Thoughts: Crush of Tentacles is the closest thing to a playable but as a 6+ CMC and conditional spell it's not going to revolutionize Blue's mass removal suite.
Drana's Chosen: Read Bloodline Keeper. Now read this
laughably unplayable trashcard. 'Nuff said.Grade F
Flaying Tendrils: I've been playing Massacre for over a decade now (I don't remember exactly when the set was released but you know what I'm saying) and for the life of me I don't know why I've basically never seen the thing in someone else's multiplayer deck. I think that cards like Infest are unplayable trash by comparison and even Drown in Sorrow is many orders of magnitude weaker than its "free" counterpart in my experience. The exile clause on Tendrils has me slightly intrigued but ultimately it's still 0 mana vs 3 and I'll take the free spell each and every time. I'll give this a shot in EDH but I do think that this card is markedly worse than Anger of the Gods since 3 damage is going to kill many more things on average. Since I'll chance upon these at some point I'm obviously going to hang on to them but this is never going to be a staple insofar as Massacre is a legal card.
Grade C-
Inverter of Truth: There are easier and more consistent ways to win games with Laboratory Maniac. I'm not buying into the hype this this will be a powerful beater/combo enabler. It's Abyssal Persecutor 2.0 and will see much more play than it deserves (although I actually really like the Persecutor in multiplayer for what it's worth).
Grade F+
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet: Kalitas is a 4 mana creature that dies to removal at no benefit. Last time I checked Sword to Plowshares (StP) is still a card and there's no law staying that you can't target this thing with Mizzium Mortars. Can I, as a "good player," put a 4 drop that "dies to removal" in my deck and feel good about it? Yes! Earthquake and Wrath of God are still amazing cards, nothing has changed on that front, but since most people like to play with new cards and regularly mix things up with new decks you just don't see 4x StP, 4x Grasp of Fate, 4x Wrath of God, etc. in every deck even if that's "optimal" or what have you. Since creatures tend to be more powerful than spells nowadays I find myself facing down many more creature-based decks that don't always make much of an effort to interact with anyone else. Trading 1-for-1 isn't exactly efficient so unless people are fielding combo decks it doesn't make much sense to waste time and resources hindering a single adversary. The long and short of it is that now more than ever I feel good about jamming these 4-6 drops that "die to removal" in my lists since they tend to stick around a lot longer than they used to. Hell, some of the best MP creatures in the game suffer from this drawback and yet they're still must-have staples. Look no further than Consecrated Sphinx or Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur which are format defining cards that "die to removal at no benefit." A huge % of the time people don't have an immediate answer to a troublesome threat and so these kinds of cards tend to dominate games more often than not.
Moving on to Kalitas himself it's clear that there's a lot going on here. A persistent form of Exile that doesn't "cost you a card" is fantastic since I love the Leyline of the Void effect but I'm generally unwilling to devote actual deckslots for it. Still, when you're playing with cards like Living Death or even against recursion in general it's nice to know that you've dealt with a problematic threat permanently. Lifegain is also always nice to have (even in the color with Gray Merchant of Asphodel) and since he can naturally pump himself gaining ~5-7 life a turn is a solid way to keep yourself out of burn range. As a sac outlet this card is clearly trash tier but since it doubles as a persistent form of enhancement you're going to find uses for it. The real meat of the card clearly lies in the token generation since this guy is bonkers in slow, grindy, creature-based metas. Insofar as combat/mass removal is being slung around then that effect is absolutely nuts and in my initial testing I've frequently cast this guy on turn 4 alongside a Massacre to put well over 20 power into play. Clearly he pairs well with/against any form of mass removal and given enough players it it's not hard for thsi guy to win games on his own. Some % of the time he'll die to removal at no benefit but left unchecked he tends to spiral out of control in a very short period of time. This is especially true in decks that feature cards like Blood Artist, Vicious Shadows and throngs of other multiplayer staples that you're probably looking to field anyways.
Grade A
Oblivion Strike: It kills Animar, Soul of Elements, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and other extremely degenerate/annoying creatures that Black sometimes struggles to remove. While this will never be my go-to answer to these kinds of permanents I've seen far too many EDH decks run cards like Tawnos's Coffin as outs to Iona and this is basically a strict upgrade.
Grade D-
Sifter of Skulls: I'm a tad irked that this card is basically a strictly worse version of Pawn of Ulamog but I've been really high on Zulaport Cutthroat lately so I've grown to love these kinds of value engines. Insofar as your deck has powerful draw effects (Grim Haruspex, Dark Prophecy, Smothering Abomination) and plenty of "death matters" cards (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Falkenrath Noble) then pairing these kinds of cards with sac outlets (such as Viscera Seer/Sadistic Hypnotist) and mass revival (such as Wake the Dead/Living Death) can lead to degenerate sequences of one turn kill (OTK) combos. Much like Kalitas this is another 4 mana creature that dies to removal at no benefit so there's a ceiling on his power/consistency but insofar as your meta is light on spot removal (mass removal is obviously fine) I think that this type of engine is fantastic.
Grade D+
Closing Thoughts: Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is ridiculously overpowered and any sequence involving him + removal is going to leave people scrambling to find an answer for him.
Chandra, Flamecaller: As we saw with Elspeth, Sun's Champnion when a card's fail-case is a Wrath of God (Slice and Dice in this instance) it's going to be a legitimate contender in most multiplayer decks that can reasonably cast it. I'm a huge fan of Jokulhaups-based decks that Obliterate the world and anything that can both survive them and win the game afterwards are stellar in my books. She's no Rite of the Raging Storm but at 6 damage per circuit she still gets there eventually and unlike the aforementioned Rite she actually affects the board the turn that she comes into play by "Slagstorming" it. That's extremely relevant and makes her a very unique finisher for this style of deck in that sense. Otherwise she's a decent draw engine for Red which is something that the color sorely needs. 2 cards a turn is still 2 cards a turn even if it forces you to play a tap-out control style deck that works at Sorcery speed. Hell, that's all of my Red decks anyways so that doesn't exactly bother me. Worst comes to worst you nuke the board for 4 and call it a day. That's not a good use of 6 mana but its passable. Overall this is a very middling card and not one that I'd feel hard-pressed to acquire.
Grade C+
Fall of the Titans: Outside of 2HG and similar formats I don't think that this card is especially playable. If I'm going to Mana Geyser into an X spell I want something that will actually win the game on the spot (Comet Storm). That being said if 2HG (or even Emperor) is your format of choice then this card is ridonkulous. Play 4 and never look back.
Grade D+
Goblin Dark-Dwellers: Red doesn't have much that it can blindly jam at 5 CMC and GDD is a powerful alternative to things like Siege-Gang Commander and Zealous Conscripts which don't seem to pack the same punch that they used to (at least for me). I've played with this card a fair amount, generally in the context of 4x Anger of the Gods decks since I like to start most of my lists with 4-6 mass removal spells anyways (Slagstorm/Flamebreak and such tend to make up the balance). I've also loved it alongside Price of Progress and Browbeat but those cards are very hit-or-miss and I wouldn't expect them to work for everyone. Regardless I've been loving my AOE Flametongue Kavu as a whole as it typically has a much more noticeable impact than most of Red's other offerings. It combos naturally with all of its primary synergy spells (Flameshadow Conjuring, Sneak Attack, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, etc.) and even in nightmare scenarios it's a still a large, evasive threat. Since I'm generally a fan of fielding 1-2 equipment in my creature-based decks (so that you can come over-the-top of people in the midgame if needed) the evasion is much more relevant that people often given credit for, especially when it's wielding something like Bonehoard. Otherwise it's a Goblin which is easily Red's strongest tribe and the fact that it can recur things like Hordeling Outburst is decent. This tends to be more relevant in EDH/Cube than in Constructed (Siege-Gang Commander OP) but much like anything with the "Wizard" or "Elf" tag hanging out with the right crowd goes a long way to boosting a card's playability. Overall I've been extremely impressed with this card and consider it to be a staple. You do have to "build around it" to some extent, it's not a "free" addition to any Red deck, but in the right shells its easily one of the more powerful Red 5 drops in the entire game. There's countless cards in various color combos (or even mono-Red) that you can pair with this thing and as long as you have 2-3 targets per GDD in your deck you should typically be able to cast them for value. From Molten Psyche to Boom // Bust (yes you get to Armageddon!) to Breaking Point there's a ton of powerful options at your disposal.
Grade B
Kozilek's Return: A Volcanic Fallout that 5s the board for free when I cast my Artisan of Kozilek? Are you freaking kidding me Wizards? One of my favorite multiplayer decks of all time is Dragon Force which is basically anything that curves a card like Assemble the Legion into a card like Jokulhaups. Cast big thing that wins the game on its own, blow up the world, win. What makes this card so stupidly powerful is that instead of having to combo-off over 2 turns this thing wipes the board immediately and for free! It's a total blow-out both early and late which makes it a fairly brainless auto-include in Big Red decks that curve out into Eldrazi.
Grade B-
Closing Thoughts: While Red didn't receive any bombs on the same level as cards such as Eldrazi Displacer and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet what it lacks in quality it makes up for in quantity. Chandra, Flamecaller, Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Kozilek's Return all have solid competitive applications in decks that can properly support their niche offerings. While you can't blindly jam either of them into a generic Red list and expect to experience long-run success the power-level is certainly there if you're willing to do a bit of legwork for it.
Oath of Nissa: The subject of the Green Preordain has been beaten to death by now but funnily enough my opinion of this card has decreased dramatically since its release. Whereas I initially believed that it would be a 4-of auto-include in any (mostly) creature-based deck I'm rather indifferent to its inclusion at this point. It brings consistency but generally at the cost of either threat density or speed and as such I haven't experienced a noticeable improvement in overall win % when fielding it. Your decks become more consistent but (generally) less explosive and weaker to removal which makes it significantly less important that I initially believed. The reality is that Green already has access to "the best 1 drops" in the form of cards such as Carpet of Flowers and Utopia Sprawl and anyone who casts those instead will typically have a stronger showing throughout the match. It also can't be Kessig Wolf Runned, Lurking Predators doesn't hit it, Glimpse of Nature doesn't trigger it, Birthing Pod can't fetch it, Survival of the Fittest can't bin it, on and and and on. Again, the card clearly isn't outright bad or anything but at the same time I don't feel as though you need them to build a solid creature-based deck in Green. My "best decks" don't even consider running it at this point whereas I would always play a card like Green Sun's Zenith or Lurking Predators.
Grade B
Vile Redeemer: I can't remember the last time that I've seen someone cast a "Fresh Meat" spell of any flavour nor a time when the effect was truly worthwhile. Even in MP circles swimming in mass removal this type of threat doesn't "get there" nearly enough to justify its inclusion.
Grade D-
World Breaker: In formats/metas where Sylvan Primordial is banned this thing does a decent impersonation. The recursion aspect is moderately relevant and the synergy that it has with Kozilek's Return is absurd. Overall I'm not blown away by this thing but that mostly boils down to the fact that Sylvan Primordial is horrendously overpowered.
Grade C-
Zendikar Resurgent: This card has done some fairly serious work in the EDH circles that I frequent as the combination of "mana doubler" and "draw engine" is downright insane if your games run long enough to abuse both. In Constructed I haven't found a great home for this card outside of silly things like Academy Rector but I do think that it's playable in ramp decks that are mostly creature-based. The biggest problem that Zendikar Resurgent suffers from is that it competes directly with Lurking Predators which is basically a strictly better + cheaper version of the card. No deck realistically wants eight copies of that effect but I've ran 1-2 in addition to 4x Lurking Predators (everything else in the deck was a land or creature) to moderate success. Realistically my sample-size is too low to say anything definitive as the card often felt overkill when played in conjunction with Lurking Predators (I either lost horribly early on or crushed the lategame) but either way I don't think that this card is a joke. If you can pick them up on the cheap then you probably should because much like Alhammarret's Archive (a criminally underplayed card by the way) I think that people are going to look at this as a win-more, expensive, do-nothing piece of crap when in reality sticking 2 extremely effects on a durable permanent is almost always a recipe for success. Maybe Lurking Predators has to be banned in your meta before this card can shine but there's definitely a world where this card carries in the lategame in Green-based creature decks.
Grade C+
Closing Thoughts: Oath of Nissa brings some much needed consistency to any Green creature-based deck and so everyone should probably acquire some at some point in their Magic careers.
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim: This is probably the most overrated card in the set unless you truly believe that Deadly Recluse is a powerhouse. Even as the Soul Sisters champion I've never been especially impressed by this card and haven't run more than 1-2 (if any) in my lists. In order for this card to truly go-off you kinda need to be playing with Mistveil Plains and Squadron Hawks which is a significantly more mana intensive engine than most people realize. The problem with this card is that it doesn't do anything other than block until you find yourself in a position where a card like Test of Endurance would have won the game anyways. I'll concede that I've definitely gotten some real value sac'ing my Ajani's Pridemates and Karlov of the Ghost Councils to gain some mad life but by no means does that automatically solve any of the problems that you're likely facing. All this to say that this is a more of a 1-2 of card than it is a 4-of given that more often than not it's simply a decent blocker as opposed to a card that can actually win games of Magic.
Grade C-
Cliffhaven Vampire: Decent playable in the BW Allies drain deck that acts as another combo enabler for Exquisite Blood. That's more for EDH than anything else but hey, to each their own.
Grade F+
Jori En, Ruin Diver: Izzet is my least favorite color combination by a wide margin which means that whenever a card like Nin, the Pain Artist or Jori En, Ruin Diver gets printed I can only think to myself how "someone other than me is going to enjoy playing with that thing." Blue Red seems to suffer from what I like to call the "Guttersnipe problem" where every deck seems to only contain a small number of cards that actually matter. When they inevitability get answered (and they always, always ALWAYS do) the player sits around and does nothing until he or she loses. They may have drawn 40 cards, killed 100 creatures, flipped 20 coins and any number of other feats but ultimately the decks can never actually win the game against multiple competent adversaries. While I understand that this isn't the colors' fault it still skews my perception of them to the point where 15 years later I refuse to touch the combo with a 50-foot pole. I have no doubt that someone out there is going to build a Jori En, Ruin Diver deck filled with Ponders, Preordains, etc. that casts good removal (such as Anger of the Gods) and draws lots of cards but I'm curious to see if anyone can actually build a winning UR deck that converts all of these small value plays into something that "actually matters."
Grade C-
Mina and Denn, Wildborn: I think that most people have cooled-off on this card enough that I don't have to add much else. This never has and never will be an Exploration of sorts and so you shouldn't be playing with them. It's a slow, bad card that doesn't even do anything.
Grade F+
Closing Thoughts: Nothing to see here.
Mirrorpool: I tried playing with this card about 4 or 5 times before I finally thought to myself "never again." Not only is it an ETBT colorless land but the copy effects are relegated to your spells/creatures only. For all the instances where it screwed me on colors/tempo not once did I go on to think "thank the Lord that included this 4 mana Twincast in my deck to pull me out of this bind." At this point I have no intention of ever fielding the thing again and I'm strongly urging caution with its inclusion. It's stupidly weak the vast majority of the time and I can guarantee you that Myriad Landscape/Karoos or whatever are vastly superior options in most decks. The one and only exception is any list with Sun Titan (and hopefully Eldrazi Displacer) since that's a more-or-less infinite value chain that doesn't cost you anything other than running some ETBT lands. While this hinders your ability to activate Emeria, the Sky Ruin it's still an extremely powerful value engine that's worth pursuing. That is, if you're actively recurring this thing (Life from the Loam, Crucible of Worlds) then it's decent but otherwise steer clear IMO.
Grade D+
Sea Gate Wreckage: For the life of me I never understood the hype surrounding this card. While it never struck me as being especially useful I tested a couple of them in various shells (may as well right?) and even though I went in expecting nothing I still left disappointed. I activated them all of twice in roughly 20 games and at no point did those extra cards come close to making a difference. I understand that it's a land that taps for mana and that doesn't ETBT but it's certainly not "free" to run and the ability is marginal at best. Your deck either has to be very low-to-the-ground or field very little card draw and none of those things sound appealing to me in the slightest. I'll concede that I never went out of my way to build my decks around the thing but I think that people grossly overestimate the value which this thing figures to provide in a typical game of Magic. My advice would be to max out at one copy tops as a lategame draw engine but don't kid yourself into jamming 4 under the assumption that you'll get good mileage out of them. The card is marginally playable at best.
Grade D+
Closing Thoughts
While some may feel compelled to judge sets on their worst cards I personally take the opposite approach and focus on my sights on their most prolific offerings. As such I personally consider Oath of the Gatewatch to be a resounding success if for no other reason than the cards Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Eldrazi Displacer. These are among the most competitive multiplayer cards of all time and will remain relevant for decades to come in all likelihood. Moreover, I personally believe that Kozilek, the Great Distortion is close to being on the same power-level as Void Winnower which is among the most devastating and disruptive threats in the game. While he needs to be paired with a hefty amount of ramp and/or card draw the prospect of "unlimited" Force of Wills seems absolutely insane to me and I cannot wait to jam him in every format imaginable. Otherwise OGW brings us top-tier offerings such as Oath of Nissa and Goblin Dark-Dwellers which won't be making the same waves as Kalitas and Eldrazi Displacer but that will still bring a fair amount of consistency and utility to their respective colors. All-in-all I love what OGW has done for the multiplayer community and look forward to many more sets such as this.
Top 10 Cards of the Set
10. Sea Gate Wreckage
9. Crush of Tentacles
8. Kozilek's Return
7. Chandra, Flamecaller
6. Goblin Dark-Dwellers
5. Endbringer
4. Oath of Nissa
3. Kozilek, the Great Distortion
2. Eldrazi Displacer
1. Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
World Breaker is a nice Sylvan Primordial-lite for those metas that ban/restrict It, but otherwise the card is still pretty lackluster.
Kozilek, the Great Distortion is fairly solid. One of my mates runs one in his "everything deck", pretty brutal counterspelling capabilities there.
My apologies for being unclear. I'm an extremely competitive player and even though you only see me post on the MP forums believe me when I say that I'm an active member of every format. From Pauper to Vintage I follow every metagame, own a competitive deck (I have to proxy Power though), etc. In the past few months on numerous occasions I've lost Magic "friends" to Modern bannings (my friend's Bloom deck got banned, another lost his Twin) and since Modern is a 1k format they're basically done with the game for now. Standard isn't any better and whereas before I had a large group of friends who could buy-in for a couple hundred dollars that's not possible any more and so many of them have quit the game (at least for now). People can say "just play Atarka Red or a budget deck with no Jaces blah blah blah" but for people who've been playing for over a decade that isn't an enticing option and most of them would rather take a break from the game than play a noncompetitive deck (or one that they don't enjoy piloting like Atarka Red). Note that I'm still friends with these players, it's moreso than that a lot of them are done with the game for now which means that it's harder to get people together for a game of Cube or whatever. If you're all going to FNM or EDH on Wednesdays then it's easy but otherwise it's hard to find the time to get people together. Hope that clears things up.
It depends entirely on what your deck is trying to do and what synergies are present. My The Mimeoplasm Reanimator deck will never cut Kederekt Leviathan whereas my Archaeomancer Control deck couldn't make the swap fast enough. Crush is the stronger card in general but given enough "creatures matter" effects and/or a lack of cheap spells in your deck then you're still going to want to use the Leviathan.
This is another great question. The Cryptologist was actually the last Blue 1 drop that I removed from my multiplayer guide. While it's true that the card is great if you can cast it on turn 1 and don't have a turn 2 play I've frequently found myself in situations where I've drawn them on turns 3-6 and struggled to find the time the level them up. They're also extremely weak when paired with mass bounce such as Whelming Wave and/or Crush of Tentacles which are cards that I think that basically every Blue deck should be playing with. Control decks need Wrath of Gods in order to compete and mass bounce + Levers doesn't work. They're also terrible in multiples (whereas Looters are fine) and even though Archivist is a powerful card I find that drawing cards is never a problem when I'm playing Blue. Even when I play my 4 player games online I still get absolutely insane value from my Mystic Remoras, Rhystic Studys, Trade Secrets, Recurring Insights, Consecrated Sphinxes, etc. so I never feel as though card quantity is an issue. The looter is only there to smooth my draws and provide me with a touch of board presence (the difference between having "something" on board vs having nothing is quite astonishing at times) and since I never expect the card to draw hate (why would you?) I find that they survive for a very long time and, in general, provide much more value than cards like Preordain.
What it boils down to, for me, is that Merfolk Looter is a card that I can blindly jam in any Blue deck as a 4-of and it will always do its job. Far too often that hasn't been the case when fielding Cryptologists (the card is miserable when you have a bunch of Whelming Waves in your deck) to the point where I had to give it the axe.
My biggest concern with this is that I'm not a financial analyst by any means nor am I am I "professional" player. Magic is a hobby that I take very seriously and play competitively but as a Canadian I'm only privy to a handful of major events and since I have no desire to travel I've never made any attempt to grind PW points. I don't try to break formats by testing with teams for weeks nor do I grind MODO for hours perfecting my Standard/Modern brews. I wait until the format gets solved, find a deck that I like and play it. I couldn't care less about duel Magic outside of sanctioned events, I literally haven't dueled someone "for fun" in ~7 years, so when cards like Drana and Thought-Knot Seer and Kozilek's Return get spoiled I don't spend any time thinking about their value due to their competitive applications in duel settings. At some point someone will post a broken deck that interests me (Rally the Ancestors OP!) and I'll play that and otherwise I don't care about anything other than multiplayer. Since MP doesn't normally drive card prices I'm clueless as to how much cards will cost in the long-run.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
But in the end, WotC doesn't make Magic for the Casual scene. Even Duel Decks, Event Decks, etc. are only meant to grab a Casual or New Player and convert them into a Standard machine - which is where WotC makes It's real money. Sure, sure, they talk about Casual play now and then, but it's on the back burner you know? From The Vault is at least sticking a round, there are some good cards to be had for the Casual player within them. My Rolling Earthquake is the foil version from Annihilation, and it is an amazing burn card to field in multiplayer games. Too bad Berserk is still way over a hundred $.
Bear in mind that affordability and flexibility are very important variables in my valuations. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is strictly better than the Looter but far too expensive for most people to afford. There's also cards like Renowned Weaponsmith and Augur of Bolas that work well in some decks but can't be blindly jammed into anything Blue. Otherwise there's cards like Snapcaster Mage, Phantasmal Image and Gilded Drake that are all extremely powerful but they're also conditional, expensive, not 2 drops and some of them can be hard for newer players to use effectively. All this to say that Merfolk Looter is the closest thing that I can find to a card that's A) reasonably powerful (it's not God tier but I'm happy enough to field it) and B) universally playable. The only true strike against it is that it's not the easiest card to use if you're very new to the game but at some point my hands are tied because I'm not a miracle worker who can spin silk into gold. There's a finite subset of Blue 2 drop critters and as much as I wish that we were swimming in powerful, flexible and cheap options that's not reality. Looter is cheap, reliable, flexible while still being reasonably powerful (I do think that the effect is quite powerful in the context of a grindy MP match that drags on for 8+ turns) and even if the card dies to removal or whatever I couldn't care less. If I have to chump with it, so be it. More often than not I get a lot more mileage out of Looter than I do a card like Preordain (not to say that Preordain is bad or anything though) and I do believe that adding anything to your board makes a big psychological difference so overall I'm a fan of the card.
In my defense I basically already do this. I happily promote extremely powerful + unique cards like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Kozilek, the Great Distortion that don't have reasonable alternatives and that can warp games on their own. Kozilek's Return, while powerful, can be replaced by cards like Earthquake and Wildfire to similar effect. I know that the "free buyback" is technically unique but the idea here is that Red doesn't struggle to keep the board clear. Kozilek, on the other hand, can't be interchanged with anything. My current EDH deck is Sidisi Reanimator and when you Necropotence and/or Necrologia for 20 cards there's no other card that you can Entomb/Buried Alive and then Animate Dead/Dance of the Dead/Necromancy to seal up the game quite like Kozilek can.
Still, I do agree that I should probably leave the financial BS out of the review. If I'm excited about a card I should leave it at that because complaining about the price may very well prevent someone from buying the card for "no good reason." I'll keep that in mind the next time around and keep the focus on the cards' strengths.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Wizards has explicitly stated in countless articles posted on the mothership website that they tailor huge portions of their design space to casual players. This is why popular themes such as mill and lifegain are continually revisited even though they have no competitive applications. Scrambleverse and the throngs of other "big dumb Red spells" aren't churned out by the dozens because WoTC believes they will be the next Modern Superstars. Rather, they make concerted efforts to tailor to individuals of all skills levels, even ones who play for fun at kitchen tables.
I'm not saying that WoTC is run by MENSA geniuses but at the same time they're not idiots. To say that they don't tailor their products to their largest demographics is an unfair assessment of their competency.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
From the price gouging of products from Commander to Event Decks and Duel Decks, to the complete lack of interest in keeping the Secondary Market in check, WotC hasn't done much to give them any accolades from me. Maybe they do, but my wallet doesn't agree with their business practices.
Back when I was a kid I played Pokemon TCG, Digimon TCG a bit of Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic. Want to know what my first edition Charizard is worth? Nothing. My Digimon cards? I'd have to pay the city dump to take them off my hands. Most TCGs fail because they don't focus on the "collectible" aspect of card games. If you invest in something that immediately becomes worthless then people will, over time, lose any and all incentive to continue investing. MTG hasn't survived for all of these decades on the backs of incompetent bafoons. For better or for worse magic's success can largely be attributed to the fact that you're legitimately investing in a product that has value and that will continue to accrue value over time. I'm not saying that Wizards is perfect nor that I agree with every decision that they've ever made but at the same time I'm not going to fault them for employing practices that will ensure the longevity of the game. They could try harder to "meet us in the middle" so to speak but printing a million Force of Wills and Wastelands isn't necessarily a good thing for the game in the long run.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Of course, I also believe that nothing has any value until someone else gives it value. Black Lotus is just a hunk of cardboard played in an imaginary game that doesn't exist unless people choose to believe it does and give it rules. As the Buddhists would say:
"Life is an illusion."
I'd add:
"That someone else makes you pay for."
Are you trying to make a point or change the subject? I'm justifying their actions from a financial perspective. As a company their only goal is to generate profits for HASBRO's shareholders and given that MTG is the most successful TCG of all time I don't think that you can give WoTC too much flak. For better or for worse their decisions have enabled them to avoid the pitfalls that dozens of other TCGs have succumbed to and given that MTG is going stronger than ever they're clearly doing something right that no other TCG (except maybe Yugioh) has even come close to replicating. We could sit here all day and cite random philosophical fluff but unless it's pertinent to the discussion at hand then I don't see the value in doing so. Yeah, we as humans assign value to things like money and cars and food and Black Lotuses and quite frankly it doesn't matter who/what/where/when/how/why we decided to do so. Life isn't an illusion, this is our reality. That is, this is our one and only chance to live our one and only life.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
How much actual value is that buy going to provide for that Casual? If the products that WotC makes for the Casual market are primarily jank with little to no actual value or synergy, what's the point? Money. WotC has to make money off the Casual scene somehow, even if it means giving them the raw end of the deal every time.
Just my view though.
A corporation's raison d'etre is to generate profits. That's literally its one and only job.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Ha, maybe we should be have this discussion in a more formal setting though? I think there's a general discussion board on these forums.
As always, many many thanks for producing this--you usually do a very good job of it. This list feels a little incomplete, given all the cards up for reviewing. Do you really think this is ALL of the ones worth talking about? I gotta say though; I feel like the individual analyses lack the proper (and usual) context when you don't include a simple letter or number grade. Maybe that's too constrictive though--i could see both sides. I missed them though.
On to specifics.
Endbringer Remember when you wrote (re: Blade of Selves) Easiest buyout of my life? Well, I feel the same about this card. I actually saw someone selling playsets for $1.99 + free ship, and I bought every single one he had. Been patiently looking for more like that ever since.. This guy feels almost like an Eldrazi planeswalker and is absolutely being overlooked, maybe even in Modern/Standard. Whatever--card is completely stupid. Try it.
SUPER interested to try out Eldrazi Displacer in W/U Blink alongside most of the creatures you mentioned in its writeup, including another you disparaged in another just below it.
Zero words to say about THIS guy? Really?
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I glanced over the list and nothing jumped out at me as being a card worth discussing. That isn't to say that none of the other cards have potential applications but this time around I didn't feel like reviewing cards like Expedite (playable in Jeskai Ascendancy combo) and/or cards that might get there one day (such as Kazuul's Toll Collector). I did delete about 6-7 entries that I would have otherwise listed but I think for the time being I'm going to forgo anything that's far too niche to warrant serious consideration.
I agree that this isn't my best work hence my hesitance to even make this post.
It's a mana-intensive 6 drop that dies to removal and that requires a fair amount of colorless mana in order to effectively utilize. I agree that it was overlooked but historically these kinds of cards almost never "get there" and initially myself (and others too I'm sure) mostly dismissed it as a result. I agree that the card is quite powerful in practice but I don't think that it's nearly as obvious as it was with Blade of Selves.
For the record I don't think that Blade Splicer is unplayable but at the same time it's not a card that I scramble to add to my decks. It's a decent defensive threat that you can feel "pretty good" about blinking but rarely is it something that will outright win games for you.
For multiplayer? Not really no. In EDH I don't mind the card but I didn't put much emphasis on EDH this time around and outside of the format this isn't really what I want to be blinking/bouncing/recurring in my UW decks. The card is clearly decent and an obvious duel powerhouse but in MP it's just a 2/3 for 3 that disrupts a single adversary and anything that would make is truly degenerate could easily use other cards to outright win the game. Given the choice of bouncing this or Peregrine Drake with my Eldrazi Displacer it's not hard to see which card wins out in the end.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Specifically, that comparison...I should've mentioned the $0.50 price point ($1.99 for 4) FIRST and then made that comparison. That context was key to my statement. At $1.99 a playset, it was basically same decision in my mind. I will be shocked if this card isn't a few bucks at some point, although the prerelease version certainly puts a ceiling on it.
Fully-powered 600-Card "Dream Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/dreamcube
450-Card "Artificer's Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/artificer
Cubing in Indianapolis...send me a PM!!
Except that's not even close to reality. The print run for Eternal Masters is ridiculously small and cards like FoW and Wasteland are all going to be printed at rare/mythic. Seriously, call your local LGS and ask them how many boxes of EM that they'll receive.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Fair point, doesn't happen often unless he has major busted flicker assistance and I noticed they did just print a probably-better one of those, buncha psychos in R&D if you ask me..
Or, you might have a better chance if you run a far-superior version. I think Reflector Mage is certainly that. If you do so little as replace your Man-o'-Wars with this guy, just a simple 1:1 replacement and do literally nothing else to your deck, assuming it is a dedicated shell that supports multiple blinking/flicker type of effects, you are going to get several lightyears more mileage out of Reflector Mage.
The tax effect...I mean, you're doing 99% of 'one of the meanest things to do to someone in a game of MtG'. You're not ******* their draws, that's absolutely HEINOUS, but it's the next worst possible thing--stuck in their hand doing absolutely nothing for them. Plus, in MP, it's even WORSE. You suddenly have to wait for the entire table to take a whole 'nother turn, and while you wait to cast your threat again, every single player is drawing more potential ammo to prevent it this second time.
In most (surely not ALL, but most) MP games I play, the threshold is never 'every single thing' for this to cripple a player anyway--just the one or two most threatening things that will buy you the breathing room you need for a turn or two, or, with a bit more luck, clear the way for your teammates to start their assault.
And surviving a ubiquitous sweeper Pyroclasm too. Doesn't make him suddenly walk on water but it's gotta be worth something in MP.
In the exact same decks, I would value this guy at a rate of 1.5x or even 2x Man o' War. What he does is that much better than a simple bounce effect.
Fully-powered 600-Card "Dream Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/dreamcube
450-Card "Artificer's Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/artificer
Cubing in Indianapolis...send me a PM!!
Yeah but when was the last time anyone has put that card in their multiplayer deck? Be it Cube/EDH/Constructed I've never seen anyone talk about the thing as if it's a known quantity. No one plays with marginal tempo threats that only affect single opponents and that aren't useful vs creatures with ETB effects (aka 50% of the creatures played in the format).
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
This. I'm pretty confident that my playset of Alliance FoWs won't lose value over the long run. In fact, demand for it may go up as people open 1 FoW and then want to buy 3 more to make their playset... same thing happened with Tarmagoyf.
My Powered 630 card Vintage Multiplayer Cube
cEDH: WUBR Blue Farm WUBR, UG Kinnan Flips UG, U Urza Scepter U
/rant